Games by Josh Raab

Archive for the month “January, 2013”

I had an awesome weekend participating in the Global Game Jam at NYU. The theme was heartbeat, and we ended up making some weird puzzle platformer about bacon, fartjumps, and the paradoxical interplay of American consumerism and body image attitudes. It’s called Gird Up Your Loins, because we’re insane. I’ll post a link below, but I’ll put up a better version when we’re done with it. The team seems excited and willing to get back to work, so it may be ready quite soon.

That team is Shuichi Aizawa (co-lead programming), Mark Anderson (audio), Chris Hernandez (art), me (co-lead design, programming), Ben Serviss (co-lead design, level design, programming), and Neil Sveri (co-lead programming). It was really just stupidly fun to work with these guys, it’s amazing we managed to make a game with all the hilarious crap that went on.

We used Construct 2, if you’re curious. The game looks like this:

If you’re impatient, you can play it here, but it will make more sense and look better and sound better when we’re done. You have the willpower to wait, don’t you?

I’ve finished designing the player aid sheets for Nika. I have also achieved basic competence in Adobe InDesign! Exciting stuff.

This isn’t meant to contain the whole rule set, just to serve as a convenient reminder for first-time players after they’ve gone through the instructions proper. Actually though it does depict almost all of the rules.

It doesn’t look super hot on screen but everything is nice (and legible) when it prints. I’ll be bringing a bunch of these to playtests and especially to SaltCON. (In two weeks!)

I’ve programmed a new game. This one’s a 2-player grid-based tactical strategy game. I call it Horrida Bella, because it’s not exactly my finest effort in the genre – I consider it more of a programming exercise than a proper design. But hey, it works, and it’s okay. You can check it out here:

Hey, quick update – my Greek warfare-themed board game Nika has been nominated for an Ion Award in the “Serious Games” category! These are awarded at SaltCON to a designer who has not previously published a board game. I’ll show the game to a panel of judges, and if I win, I’ll be in contract talks with a publisher! Super exciting.

I’m flying out to Salt Lake City in mid-February to present it. They strongly recommend getting as much practice explaining the game as possible, so please get in touch with me if you’d like to try it out. Otherwise, just wish me luck!